MARK GODDEN: A Harmony of Contrasts - Mark Godden, a choreographer who was born in Texas and is working in Canada, is gaining an international reputation

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1999 by Deborah Meyers

Texas-born Mark Godden has become a Canadian-based choreographer who is in growing international demand.

The secrets we reveal and conceal, the contradictions that unsettle and enliven us--these are some of the themes developed in the dances of choreographer Mark Godden. So it's no surprise that the man is a Texan with a gentle voice, an American who lives in Canada, an artist both bold and cautious who says he is "spiraling toward something of significance" in his life. For the past ten years he has been making musically astute ballets that have earned him honors in Canada and at international ballet competitions and a place in the repertories of many North American companies. New Yorkers saw his work in October 1997, when Alberta Ballet brought his Minor Threat to the Joyce Theater. Set to the first two movements of Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, Minor Threat is a delicate and vigorous creation, graced with vernacular episodes that are as grounded and as heavenly as its score. When I attended one of those performances, I learned that the couple sitting next to me had seen the same program the evening before--and they had returned specifically to see that work a second time.

"I'll always be a Texan," says Godden. He was born in Dallas in 1958 and, in the course of his mother's four marriages, moved to Houston, then to a small town outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, then back to Dallas. Four years younger than his only sister, he describes himself as "a shy kid, because I grew up around people who were extroverts in every way." He adapted easily to his changing circumstances: "There are hidden things that come out later on, once you start exploring a relationship with somebody else. You realize that there are a lot of things that you don't know, that your family couldn't teach you."

He started playing drums when he was eight years old. "My idol was Buddy Rich," he says. "Everybody around me was getting into rock and roll, but my first love was jazz and especially the big-band era." In junior high school he answered a call for musicians to put sounds to a school production, an improvisational theater piece based on Aesop's Fables. "This was my first experience of sitting in the dark, putting sounds to the actions that were onstage"--a portent of a life devoted to setting movement to music.

Like many male dance artists, he didn't intend to enter the dance field. In his last year of high school, he applied to many theater schools before entering Carnegie-Mellon University's drama program. He studied acting for two and a half years until his money ran out, then took time off to decide what he wanted to do. In Denton, Texas, he worked at Denton Country Club as a waiter and janitor and took a few music classes at North Texas State University's music school--and a ballet class from Hugh Nini.

"I didn't know anything about dance," Godden says. "I just knew when I walked into Hugh's studio that there was a part of me in that class. It's always an extraordinary find for a dance teacher to have a male walk in--especially in Texas. And especially in the Bible Belt. Everyone in class was swooning over me. I thought, What is this? Growing up in the seventies I used to go dancing all the time. It was the disco era and people would say, `You're a good dancer,' but it's not something you think about. This was the first time that someone in the professional world was saying, `You're quick, you've got amazing feet and legs: you should do this.' I was twenty years old."

Nini, who was Godden's contemporary, had studied in the summer program at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, and had been hired by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's then artistic director, Arnold Spohr. But his dancing career ended just before he joined the company, after he broke his back in a traffic accident in Houston. Nini remained active as a teacher, however, and had developed a fast-track approach to training in his Denton studio that enabled Godden to make up for lost time. Thanks to Nini's Winnipeg connections, Godden was one often students from his studio to enter the 1980 Royal Winnipeg Ballet School Summer Program.

"I knew nothing about Canada," Godden recalls. "To me it was just an adventure, like showing up on a pier and going off to sea. I didn't know what was going to happen and I didn't really worry about it. After summer school I was accepted into the fall program. Nobody else from Denton wanted to stay--I was the only one. Before I went to the RWB School I had auditioned for the Boston Ballet School and ABT's school and was told that I was far too old. But in Winnipeg, being an older dancer with a university education and training in theater was an advantage."

Godden credits David Moroni, his principal teacher at the RWB School, with his decision to stay in Winnipeg. "He was so dynamic, so inspiring. For the three years until I got into the company I spent my days dancing. I'd take two ballet classes in the morning, then character class, pas de deux class, jazz class, modern class--we had exposure to everything. I had pretty much the regular training everybody has, but quicker. I watched the company. I performed with them as an apprentice. And about a month into my apprenticeship one of the dancers left and so I got a job, just like that. That was the 1984-85 season."